In Cergy-Pontoise, animals in the spotlight at a photo festival

Inaugurated on November 12, the festival du Regard continues at Cergy-Pontoisewith a new batch of exhibitions. Open since January 14 and until March 2, these are all free and put in the spotlight six contemporary photographersgathered at the Carreau de Cergy. What do they have in common? Take a close interest in animalsin their environment, in their relationships with their peers or with human beings.

After the hilarious jumping cats of Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek, the astonishing sharks captured by the underwater photographer Laurent Ballesta or the elegant “Night Birds” by Nathalie Baetens exhibited until last December, now comes the most famous of wildlife photographers, Vincent Munier (born 1976). While his color images currently delight visitors to the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, he enters Cergy into dialogue with le Finnish Pentti Sammallahti (born in 1950), author of rougher, more raw black and white images, but just as captivating.

Insights into the animal condition

For his part, Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt (1947–2015) directs poodles, great apes and horses in photos that tell stories, most often with humor, but sometimes coupled with a deep questioning about the animal condition in a world dominated by men. Sensitive, too, to the misfortunes of feathered and furry beings (like her mother and sister before her, the young woman explains that she works as a volunteer in an animal care center), the American Annie Marie Musselman immortalizes injured and treated animals.

Just as disturbing, the work of the Polish Marta Bogdańska (born in 1978) focuses on animals used for military purposesimmortalizing a pigeon armed with a camera, or a police dog trained on its legs. Requested in advance by the festival, the student of the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris Cergy (ENSAPC) Élias Galindo-Lopez presents, for his part, a video and a sound installation, results of six months of exchanges with young children whom he invited to dream of themselves as birds…

Historical photographers

An invigorating work that responds with a contemporary approach to some “classics” also brought together by the festival: Richard and Cherry Kearton (1862–1928 / 1871–1940), two British ornithologists known for having been the very first to photograph a nest in 1892, as well as the very famous Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904), whose fascinating stories are well known visual studies of animal movementlike that of a pelican in flight.

From yesterday to today, wildlife photography causes great experimentsmost of the time extremely sensitive and empathetic. An important festival, to visit before the first Animal Art Fair in Brittany opens on March 13 at the Grande Halle Oberthur in Rennes.